Haha Alan - I read many of your former posts, and am used to the fine British sense of humour!

Thanks for the good wishes with the op - I'm expecting to be as useless as a newborn, and the trick will be to listen to my better judgement! Luckily I have a partner (a Brit by birth!) who knows how to work with domesticated animals, so she should see me right.

I had a few good grins about your remark on young AB the one-day captain of the Protea cricket team. He hails from my current hometown, Pretoria (and so does Faf du Plessis, who captains the T20 team). Yes I agree they should have dropped AB to give the Paki's a sporting chance! AB finished as overall topscoring batsmen in the series with the Pakistani's.

Am an avid sportsman myself, despite the quite severe limitations: played provincial level tennis for 4 provinces to date, and the most recent one was last year. Won all my singles matches in the national veterans tournament!

I hope to regain 3-4 inches too, and to carry on playing good tennis and doing many miles on my mountain bike for many years to come.

R.A. & A.S. diagnozed 3+ decades ago
Pretoria, South Africa
"A head full of fears has no space for dreams"